After All, Who Is Doing the Exercising?

There’s no doubt that exercise is a key to being healthy and losing weight. Eating healthy is certainly important--as I have said in so many articles--but getting up and moving is a major part of your strategy for long-term health. People who make exercise part of their lives are healthier. An analysis of data from a large-scale study shows that people who are trying to lose or maintain weight tend to be the people doing the most exercising.

Researchers from the CDC and the University of Texas used data from a large-scale, long-term study known as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) (Int J Beh Nutr Phys Act 2008; 5:25). They evaluated the Body Mass Index and exercise level of over 14,000 men and women, based on whether an individual was trying to lose weight, maintain weight or was not working on her weight at all.

The researchers found (not very surprisingly) that those who were not working on their weight tended to exercise the least. Those people did not even meet the recommended minimum amount of 150 total minutes per week of exercise.

Those who were actively trying to lose weight tended to exercise more, but even fewer met the minimum recommendation of 420 minutes per week.

Even if you are now at a normal Body Mass Index , it doesn’t mean you can skip exercising if you want to avoid gaining weight. The best research we have shows that 30 minutes of vigorous exercise per day, six days a week, is critical to maintaining not only a healthy weight, but also muscle mass and even bone density.

It’s important to eat healthy, but making exercise a priority in your life is clearly also crucial. You’ll feel great!

Timothy S. Harlan, M.D., a.k.a Dr. Gourmet
Drgourmet.com